Was it a living thing

Every bead of sweat on the bass clarinet player's eyelids

It was a casket-type burial at the wealthy academy, a day no one wanted to see their shadow. They kept their mouths together and straight at the ground the man was flung into piles worms and filth; beauty. A fitting death for the man who built this town with his own bloody hands, scaled the surface and took his assets. He was dead, but everyone loved him and wanted honor. His honor was different than that of the city, I could tell. This was a rural area. Rural folks had more honor. Why was Henry coming to our house? The number of stairs; I don't like him at all. What a man. A man of agriculture and construction, killing bears. He loved Mrs. Kingsley. He scraped the lichen off the people and made them feel good about themselves. Saving every pebble in the street. Walking with a bag full of emptyness. Get off my shit. Leave it there. There was no reason to disrespect the man who had finally spilled his guts all over the grand floor. The tile with owls on it. Even in heaven there would be screaming maids finding him wounded and unafraid. What lay before them? Tumbling off a bridge, that's all that mattered, that's all that illuminated, that's all that reached to him immediately. Do you know how big the universe is? Sending signals. The man was in their hearts, pumped through every vein, to every organ, necessary or otherwise. And the memory of his kindness was in my right vacuole when I thought of all that he had done for this city, for it had prospered as he'd fallen. It's funny how people never see the things that come from their lives. Fanfare in death. Others know the culmination of their efforts. I did. But it was a raw spot in me, on my consciousness, just one of the blemishes that wore me down, eroded me into pulp on some church pew, in some fine glass, in some running ocean. Crippled by knowledge, only to make a life less bearable, was this funeral. A watermark on the document. This was a saint. I don't think you were home. The door was still open and I was still lonely and you were still angry and trees were still standing. I thought he took your bed, but he gave it to you first. A bed of earth. Times struggled against my visage but no one prevailed. Victory flickered as flames upon a corpse. Her sister will kick you in your balls. I am a good person. Vomit bullets out out out out out out out out out out out, kill the dead. More ink or paper?

A ditch. A hell. By herself.